A Mechanic's stories can now be told (well, not all of them, but some of the good ones.)

SAY WHAT?!

1) Engineers may be creative, and good at coming up with new ideas, but their grammar, in many cases, is not what you'd expect. One of my favorites (and probably one of the only stories I will ever be able to tell from being at Roush Industries,) involves a term which is apparently fairly common for engineers; "Thermal Event." To the rest of us, a "Thermal Event" is an electrical fire. And, frankly, it sounds more to me like something you'd take a package of bratwurst and a six-pack of Leinies to; "Oh, look dear, the Johnsons have invited us to their next thermal event. Where's the sunblock?"

2) Engineering semantics is also at the root of one of my other favorite stories. When I was a technician at Bill Cook Imports in Farmington Hills, MI, we used to get a lot of work from the Nissan Technical Center, which wasn't too far away. I was handed a work order once, which read, verbatim, "When someone is in the back seat, they rattle." My immediate response to the service writer was, "Well, tell them to shut the hell up, then!" Apparently that wasn't the nature of the problem.

3) One of the only other stories from Roush I can probably talk about was an overheard conversation between two engineers about a '93 Cobra, which was, at that point, serving as the test mule for the 347-cubic-inch engine.One of them said, "yeah, something's not right with it. It's not making very much power. Used to be, if you shoved it in second gear and nailed the throttle, you'd be sideways." Yes power is a drug, I guess. Well....I KNOW, really

4) As a dealership technician, you get any number of strange compaints. Some of them you can fix, some of them you can't. One of my all-time favorites is still the customer with a Lincoln Navigator whose complaint was, "excessive noise with the sunroof OPEN." Huh?! Sorry, my magic wand is out being detailed at the moment, I guess you're just gonna have to deal with it. And, yes, I *did* take our in-house glass guy for a ride, just to make sure it wasn't REALLY obnoxious. It wasn't. To say nothing of the customers who come in with "vehicle vibrates over 90 mph." Unh-huh. And you're paying the ticket when I test drive it, is that right?

5) One of my other favorite engineering tales involves a Technical Service Bulletin for Viper GTS coupes. It seems the engineers didn't account for fuel tank accessibility when they designed the car. Solution? Have a technician cut a 2'x4' HOLE behind the seats, and create an "access panel." I kid you not. This is the factory-approved solution to this problem. All I can say is that I wouldn't want to have been the service writer, trying to explain this to a customer; "Mr. Phillips? Hi, John Smith at XYZ Dodge. Um, the good news is, we'll be able to replace the fuel pump in your Viper, but we're going to have to create an "access panel" first. How? Well, um, we have to gut the interior, and cut a huge hole behind the seats first, to get the tank out....yes, that's right.....Mr. Phillips....hello?"

6) A dealership General Sales Manager had me install aftermarket wheels and tires on his personal 7-series BMW, because, in his words, "it floats like a turd in a punch bowl." Perhaps the strangest euphemism on record, I think.

MEN WILL BE BOYS

I was a used car technician, and did a lot of new-car preps in my time. And I have news for you; you will never drive your car harder than your technician already has.

1) One of my favorites was driving the then-brand-new Nissan 350Z. Preliminary inspection is done, time to take it out for the test drive. And thrash it a little. Called a friend when I was on the test drive. One of the first things out of her mouth? "How fast are you going?" "A-buck-ten, a-buck-fifteen, maybe, why?" "Okay, call me back when you SLOW DOWN, okay?!" Yeah, that.

2) The 1989-1992 Ford Probe GTs were some of the wickedest, nastiest little cars made in that period. And cursed with hellacious torque-steer that would punt you into the next lane, if you weren't careful. One of the other dealers I worked at sent a trade-in Probe GT to auction, after finding out it was $1,200 or so to fix the non-functioning alternator. Which meant I had to get it from dealer to auction house (across town,) on one battery charge, or risk embarrassment when someone had to come get me, in the days before cell phones. I had that car deep into triple-digits along the way, and have frankly never been so scared, but I made it to my destination. With no tickets. Mission accomplished. I think they were shocked.

3) Other used cars go to auction because, well, they're hoopties. They're barely worth what the dealer has in them, and getting the money back out of them will require prayer. Like the '86-ish Buick Riviera I drove to auction once that shook like a massage chair on Meth at freeway speeds. Most unpleasant. Or the dealer owner who had me drive one of his 1954 MG-TDs to auction, because I was one of the few people in the dealership who had experience with a crash-box manual transmission. Understand, an MG-TD has about the same horsepower as a similar-era farm tractor, and numerically-high gearing, meaning at 55 mph on the freeway, the engine is spinning at about 5000 rpm or so. with no permanent side windows it makes an enormous, ear-splitting racket, in combination with a side-to-side motion guaranteed to ensure seasickness every time a semi passes by. And doing the gymnastics required to get my six-foot-two-inch body into this car....it wasn't fun. There was also the Sales Manager's '73 454 Corvette he wanted to take to auction; it was hell keeping it reined under 80 mph on the freeway, combined with the C3 Corvette's "sitting-in-a-packing-crate" view from the interior, and the terrifying 3/4"-or-so dead spot, right in the middle of the steering wheel. How did y'all survive these things?!

4) Other vehicles famous for that panic-inducing side-to-side motion? Ford Bronco IIs and Jeep CJ5s come immediately to mind. Older Fox-body Mustangs with Michelin's infamous TRX tires were terror-inducing because of their nasty tendency to slide all over the place on a surface that wasn't bone-dry. At which point they were unbelievable, but when you grow up in Wisconsin, like I did, that doesn't happen nearly often enough. And don't get me started on backup alarms; the ones that beep frantically if you get even REMOTELY too close to something around you. It probably saved my hide a few times in Porsches, but I still hate them.

PERSONAL BESTS

Some cars are just amazing in and of themselves, for whatever reason. I love Mazda Miatas, probably because I can FEEL what they're doing. Driving doesn't get much more sensory than in a Miata.

1) For sheer size and mass, nothing will ever compare to an H1 Hummer. Nothing. This car takes up just about all of whatever lane you're driving in, and God Forbid you ever have one on a two-lane road. Stop, and compromise will inevitably ensue.

2) "Sweet Spot" cars are few and far between; the ones that are not so outrageously powerful or handling-endowed that they're trying to kill you at every turn, but do their jobs on the most unbelievable levels. The two I have encountered thus far were a '96 Mercedes 300E, and an early-model Lexus IS300. There are a lot of GOOD cars out there, and the memorable drives still include many. The Porsche Boxster S (which I'd take over a Carrera in a minute, simply because on the stick-shift models, my leg doesn't smack the steering wheel on a Boxster.) BMW 540 and 740s. The BMW M-Roadster. The BMW 318ti I drove that was blessed with a Jackson Racing supercharger, and other tweaks. What a ride that was. The Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V, although, in spite of its slingshot zippiness, I could have done without the vague (and that's being kind,) 6-speed shifter, and the torque-steer that's maybe only slightly less vicious than that of the early Probe GTs. Speaking of Probe GTs, the '93-'96 models were unspeakably slick with a glassy grace in every move and function.

More later.